The Guardian System: The strongest Summoner's quest to save his family

In the town square, the Thorn-Lashers reacted to the sudden threat. They turned away from the dying Spectral Knights, seeking escape routes. But the fire had already spread to surround them. Flames blocked every exit, forming walls of heat that made approach impossible.

The plant creatures tried to retreat anyway. They pushed toward the streets, desperate to escape the encroaching inferno. But the fire moved faster, and the buildings collapsed even faster.

The fire tore through the vines, devoured the walls, and turned every street into a tunnel of flame.

The first Thorn-Lashers to reach the fire died. Their bodies ignited as soon as they touched. The temperature was simply too hot. The flames consumed the dry plant matter in seconds, and their cores soon after.

The spheres cracked from the heat, releasing bursts of greenish fluid that evaporated in the flames.

More Thorn-Lashers tried different routes. They climbed buildings, seeking higher ground. But the rooftops were already burning. They burrowed into the spongy ground, trying to escape underground. But the organic matter was fuel as well, and it burned beneath them.

The fire surrounded the square completely. The Thorn-Lashers were trapped; hundreds of them were packed into an area that was rapidly becoming a killing zone.

They attacked the flames in desperation. But the flames couldn't be cut, couldn't be torn, and couldn't be stopped.

The town's structures groaned, then buckled, collapsing in fiery avalanches that buried the square beneath burning rubble.

Above, the vine canopy dissolved into a storm of ember and ash, every fragment glowing bright before vanishing into smoke. The entire area became a death trap where nothing could survive. Even the air itself seemed to burn.

The last of the Spectral Knights faded; their task was complete. With nothing left to fight, the Thorn-Lashers turned on each other or flailed at the encroaching fire. Their struggles weakened as the heat drained their energy, reducing them to desperate, stumbling figures in the inferno.

Outside the town, the raid watched the inferno rage. The heat was intense even at this distance, forcing the survivors to back away from the tree line. The roar of flames drowned out all other sounds. Smoke rose in a massive column, visible for miles.

Reidar stared at the burning town, his expression unreadable. The plan had worked. The Thorn-Lashers were trapped, burning, and dying. An entire town consumed by fire, transformed into a crematorium for plant monsters.

Helga stood beside him, her face lit by the orange glow. "How long do we wait?"

"Until it burns itself out," Reidar said. "Or until we're sure nothing's left alive in there."

Aldric approached from the left. "The fire's spreading beyond the town. It's following the vine networks into the surrounding forest."

"Let it burn," Reidar said, watching the flames consume the town. "I don't care if the whole Briar Patch goes up in smoke. Every Thorn-Lasher that dies in this fire is one less we have to face. And if we're lucky, the elder will come to us—driven out by the heat, forced to face us on our terms."

The raid watched and waited. The fire burned on.

…

…

…

The fire kept growing, swallowing everything in its path. With no sign of slowing down, the group had no choice but to pull back. They circled around the town, putting distance between themselves and the spreading flames. The heat still clung to their skin, but at least they could breathe easier now. The fire wasn't just burning the town—it was devouring the entire area, turning the Thorn-Lashers' territory into an inferno. And it wasn't stopping anytime soon.

There hadn't been any sign of the Elder Thorn‑Lasher, so the group figured it had to be down by the river. They sprinted toward the water and made it there in no time.

Keeping close to the shore and steering clear of the flames, they trailed the river north of the burning town—exactly where Lena swore the creature would be.

The forest grew stranger in that area. The trees got even more twisted and unnatural as they went deeper. They were not going to last forever, though.

"How is the quest counter?" Reidar asked.

"We killed everything we had. Only the Elder remains," Aldric said.

"Good… Let's not make this too long then."

Reidar made careful notes of the flowers. One of those had taken down Lena, and the last thing he wanted was for the same thing to repeat itself.

He warned the raid to avoid them as much as they could. No one argued. Luckily, his Vorathid Ant Foragers triggered most of the plants, so it would take a while for them to recharge enough to be dangerous.

The still-surviving plants also captured Reidar's summons, so by simply observing traces of fights or seeing the bodies of the monsters being devoured alive, they told the raid where the dangerous monster-like plants were.

They pushed deeper. The distance closed slowly: three miles, two miles, one mile.

The vegetation became nearly impenetrable at that point. Fighters had to hack paths through walls of vine. The spongy ground turned to thick organic sludge that sucked at boots with each step. Progress slowed to a crawl.

"How much farther?" someone asked.

Aldric checked his map. "Half a mile. Maybe less."

"Half a mile through this?" Helga gestured at the growth. "That's another hour minimum."

"Then we take another hour. We have time now."

They kept moving. The raid was clearly running on fumes, feet dragging, spells fizzling out, and attacks becoming sloppy and half-hearted. But no one stopped. They couldn't. Not after coming this far.

So they pushed through the fatigue, through the pain, through the creeping doubt. One foot in front of the other. That's all it took.

The forest opened suddenly onto a massive clearing. The survivors emerged from the vegetation and stopped, staring at what lay ahead.

The Elder Thorn-Lasher's domain.

The clearing stretched at least two hundred yards across and was coasting the river. The sound of the running water drowned everything else.

The ground was covered in wet and pulsating red matter that moved with rhythmic contractions, like exposed muscle tissue.

Vines as thick as tree trunks crisscrossed the space, forming a web of crimson arteries. At the center, rising from the living ground, the Elder Thorn-Lasher waited.

It was massive, far more massive than the normal Thorn-lashers. It was at least Fifty feet tall, its body a twisted amalgamation of thousands of vines woven into a grotesque parody of a tree.

<This thing is going to be worse than the normal Thorn-Lashers.>

The trunk was so wide ten people couldn't have circled it. Branches stretched out in every direction, each one lined with sword-sized thorns. At the top, a huge sphere throbbed with a sickly green glow—the creature's core, blown up to monstrous size, just like its twisted human-like shape.

There were smaller Thorn-Lashers around. They must have been its guards, although Reidar couldn't understand why that thing needed guards of that sort.

They were actually tending to the Elder like servants to a god, as they were its children.

The raid stared in silence.

"That's its level?" someone said.

"That's it."

—[«Elder Thorn-Lasher—Level 117»] —

Helga drew her sword. "Form up. We're ending this." She turned to Reidar.

"Is the plan still valid?"

He nodded. "Let me summon my bears; take care of the other monsters first and then focus on the main course."